One of the b-to-b marketing world’s brightest lights is Rick Short, director of marketing communications for the Indium Corporation, based in Utica, NY.

Rick’s company is named after indium, the 49th element in the Periodic Table, a rare, soft, malleable and easily fusible metal chemically similar to aluminium or gallium but physically more closely resembling zinc, according to that great know it all, Wikipedia.

Founded in 1934, Indium the company develops, manufactures and supplies specialty alloys, solders and thermal interfacematerials to the global electronics assembly, semiconductor fabrication and packaging, solar photovoltaic, and thermal management markets.

So about as industrial a company as you can find.

Which raises the question of how and why, in my opinion, Rick and Indium are so far ahead of the vast majority of b-to-b marketers—including some mighty big b-to-b names—when it comes to digitally engaging customers and prospects through the art and science of blogging?

Rick and Indium’s story starts with the fact that, until recently, they had nine (yes, 9!) company engineers blogging regularly (usually at least once a month) on the Indium Web site home page on their areas of specific expertise (and labeled that way). The look was not unlike that of “Hollywood Squares.”

If nine weren’t enough, Indium recently added three more bloggers, for a total of 12. But that move had some implications that led Rick and Indium to further innovate. As Rick told me recently, “After we got to 12 bloggers and had assigned all the top themes, no matter how good [the next person in line might be], pretty much all the good topics were taken up.”

“So we went from individually owned blogs to keyword blogs,” Rick said. “The system now assigns your post to any of 85 keyword blogs, so now our 12 bloggers and other casual bloggers are potentially authorities on potentially multiple topics, not just one thing.”

“in one move,” Rick added, “we dissolved territoriality, let our regular bloggers leverage all of their expertise, let the guy who’s a casual blogger contribute and found a way to make our blogging even more relevant and useful to our customers.”

The new keyword blog system appeals to customers, Rick says, because they’re more likely to look at that list of words and say, “You talk what I know about.” It better matches customer behavior, Rick adds, because “People search because they have a challenge, opportunity, need or serious problem.”

Thanks to a matching search program supporting all 85 keywords, prospective Indium customers using these search terms on Google go directly to one of Indium’s 85 topic-rich blogs, not just to a customized landing page or, worse, a corporate home page.

Lest anyone think that Rick writes everyone’s blogs, he doesn’t. In fact, although he is the guy who pushes the button to let every new post go live, he doesn’t even read or approve anyone’s posts. Expressing a philosophy that would scare the bejeebers out of many companies, Rick said it comes down to this: “If [our people] are good enough to spend time with customers and travel all over the world [to help them], do you think they’re not good enough to interact online?”

One helluva question. Personally, I believe that many corporations that today require every draft blog post to be reviewed by legal eventually will transcend this fear and get to where Rick and Indium are, but it could be many years for some and perhaps never for a few.

If Rick’s thinking about blogging still isn’t different enough for you, get ready for how he thinks about measurement. When I noted that it looked like relatively few blog posts were getting any comments, he patiently explained the facts of blogging business life to me. A telcom engineer dealing with a defect or problem, he said, isn’t going to post his or her problem—and publicly disclose proprietary information that could lower a stock price or be grounds for a class-action lawsuit. Instead, the engineer will pick up the phone and call the Indium engineer who appears to have the expertise he or she needs.

And that’s exactly what happens in real life, Rick says. That’s why telephone numbers and other contact information encircle every blogger on the Indium site. And, it dawned on me—this time before Rick had to tell me—this is why Indium engineers keep blogging consistently. Rick isn’t cracking a whip. Blogging brings them closer to customers, creates incremental business for Indium and makes the cash register ring.

While many b-to-b marketers are still debating whether they should let their experts blog, Rick and Indium have been monetizing their substantial investment in blogging for some time. No surprise when you understand how driven Rick is. “I want to become the #1 most accountable function in my company. I want to be the most “metrified” department, and I want to outsell the sales department.”

By the way and, again, no surprise, Rick himself for quite some time has published one of the best blogs on b-to-b marketing around. Nothing fancy, it’s called “Rick Short’s B2B Marcom Blog.” Check it out and subscribe. I think you’ll be glad you did.